Twosomes

Art. Photography. Introduction by Julia Courtney. Mark Chester's Twosomes touring exhibit and award-winning companion book from Un-Gyve Press represents images culled from his forty years of traveling with a camera, presented in pairings related by subject matter, graphic interest or, as the photographer puts it, "a stretch of the imagination." A wide-reaching body-of-work that connects architectural icons with sidewalk signage; Japan with Iowa; 1979 with 2002; celebrity with passerby in a manner that reveals, as novelist Paul Theroux describes, "tremendous humanity and humor... In this juxtaposition of matching moods and paraphernalia, Mark Chester shows us in an ingenious way how the world is related and how we matter to each other." TWOSOMES features 202 plates, 101 image pairs. The 11" x 13" hardcover book designed by Un-Gyve Limited with an introduction by Julia Courtney, Curator of Art for the Springfield Museums, Springfield, Massachusetts, is a 2012 PDN Photo Annual winner in the Book Category.

Mark Chester has been a professional photographer since 1972. He was Director of Photography and staff photographer at ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), in New York City, prior to relocating to California in 1975. His photographs and/or feature stories have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner, Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star, Denver Post, Prime Time Magazine (Cape Cod Times), among others. Chester created, produced and photographed the book, No In America (Taylor, 1986), a collection of tongue-in-cheek photographs of "no" signs. Previously, he photographed Charles Kuralt's book, Dateline America (HBJ, 1979). In 1987, Chester created and produced the traveling exhibition and catalog, Shanghai: In Black and White, in commemoration of San Francisco's "sister city", as part of the San Francisco-Shanghai Cultural Exchange Program.  The photographs were displayed at the San Francisco Main Library, the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, The Kogod Arts Center of the Sidwell Friends School, Washington, D.C. and other venues. Chester's photographs are in permanent museum collections, including Baltimore, Brooklyn, Corcoran, Denver, Portland (Maine), San Francisco, and other institutions. His images have been exhibited nationwide in galleries, including O.K. Harris (NYC), Camera Obscura (CO), and San Francisco Airport and in galleries in Japan, Vietnam, London and alternative exhibition space. Born in Baltimore, Chester grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from the University of Arizona (1967) with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was a member of the Copley Society of Art, Boston. A former Adjunct Instructor at Cape Cod Community College, and photography instructor at the Falmouth Artists Guild and Cape Cod Art Association and Lesley University Seminars, Chester contributes the column, In My Mind's Eye to the Community Newspaper Company on Cape Cod, including the Falmouth Bulletin.